Chronology of Revelation, part 4

If you've been following along, you'll see that I believe that Revelation divides itself naturally into three parts, discussed in Revelation 1:19: "The things which you've seen, the things which are, and the things that shall be after this (KJV, hereafter)."
Then the "after this" resolves itself again into a fairly structured set of events, detailed at various places in the Old and New Testaments, but most particularly in Matthew 24-25 and its parallels in the other two synoptic Gospels.  John doesn't deal with this in his Gospel, because he also received and wrote down the Book of Revelation.
If you want to fully understand the events in Revelation, here is how to look at it.

1. The focus is Israel. Jesus makes this very clear in Matthew 24-25.
2. The focus is local.  Jesus discusses the Temple, Jerusalem, and so forth.  It's a prophecy about what will happen there, in Israel. It affects the whole world, but it happens in Israel. John agrees with this (see Revelation 11, for example).
3. The focus is on believers. Revelation treats the church as if it doesn't exist, so we don't know if that's because the "Rapture" has taken place, or because believers are all underground.
4. Jesus taught that these events were to be literal, not figurative (how do you have a "figurative" destruction of Jerusalem?)
5. Jesus taught that there was a specified time frame for these events, but he left the beginning point a bit vague, and the end point the same way.  We have to get our information about beginning and ending from other resources (Daniel 9, Daniel 12, etc.).

I want to suggest to you that as you read Revelation with me (PLEASE read Matthew 24-25), that you consider what all these things would mean if they happened in the world today.  As weird as it sounds, we are on track for these events to actually happen.
The message Jesus gives at the end of Matthew 24 is the most important one of all:

Matt. 24:42 Therefore watch, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. 

Since none of us knows when, we must make ourselves ready for "anywhen."
Let's do that.